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Friday, May 11, 2012

San Francisco Sewing Meetup

This week started normal enough.  I worked on the blog for a bit on Sunday evening, posting my first MMM recap.  I started planning out the after work week activities - dance classes, workouts, sewing time, dinners... the usual.  I went to bed ready for the week to come.

As I went through my emails on Monday morning, I found a response to my blog post from the lovely Amy.  There's a meetup happening? This week? In SF? Why, that's just a hop, skip and a jump away! Ok, it's really an hour car drive and that doesn't count rush hour traffic, but hmmm, I really should look into this.

So I headed on over to Karen's blog: Did You Make That.  I wasn't regularly subscribing because I was feed reader challenged (no longer though!) so I saw her WordPress posts usually through links from other blogs or when I remembered to go to it directly.  I started to get excited when I saw that yes, it's true, she's in from the UK and wants to meet up during her vacation. Count me in! Oh wait, I guess I should coordinate with the hubby.

It all worked out and as each day got closer I would get more and more excited.  But with that came nerves - I wouldn't really know anyone going. Is this going to be weird? I can be painfully shy when I first meet people. I can totally relate to Liz's experiences and nerves before events like this.  Honestly when I walked into our meet-up location I wanted to turn right back around before anyone saw me. But I didn't! I forced myself to awkwardly approach the table with the look that I saw throughout the night. The 'this group of strangers looks like they might be the sew-ist meet-up but how do I ask them that?' look.



We met at a wine bar in downtown San Francisco called Rouge and Blanc.  It's right off of tourist central Union Square and just around the corner from the legendary Britex Fabrics.  I didn't have time, or the money, to visit the latter during this trip so the hubby and I raced down the street to get to the meetup at 6pm on the dot.  He deposited me at the door - me probably looking with a pleading look like 'don't leave me! here' and a 'I'll text you if I need you to get me sooner than expected!'  I'm tellin' ya - total nerves kicking in.

So I approached the table and was given the 'yes, we're the crafty meet-up!' Phew, that wasn't so bad.  I took a seat and introductions began. Then I watched as our one table became two, then three, then seats were squeezed in between and people were kneeling to talk to one another. Karen had attracted quite the crowd! The majority of the people were strangers to me in the beginning but it was fun to see people walk in that you recognized from their blogs or other events.


We were pretty packed in as our group kept growing, so I spent most of the evening in my middle seat chatting with Colleen and Silvia.  Colleen was visiting all the way from Calgary, Canada. And next to me was Laura from London. This was quite the global affair!  Silvia had excellent taste and it turned out we were both wearing our versions of the new Colette dress, Hazel.  Only at a sewing meet-up my friends.  I saw Amy came in and promptly thanked her for information me of this shindig.

Our side of the table talked sewing histories, tips, tricks, favorite finds, etc.  Beth from SunnyGal Studios was the main organizer with Karen and did such a great job at bringing us all together.  Karen was sweet enough to hop over to my side of the table and we chatted for a bit about her trip, blogging, traveling with her overlocker (she didn't), and the wonderful people who were in attendance.



As I mentioned before, I wore my new Hazel dress aka the 'Modern Garden Party' dress to the meet-up.  Except I totally forgot that I have a horrendous tanline going on right now from my trip to Hawaii.  Ugh! I've got to work on that this weekend.



Oh, and Amy helped me resolve two problems. The first - I was having issues with subscribing to blogs in my Google Reader. I could only follow people who had Google Friend Connect or other mysterious circumstances where I was given the Google option. She helped me fix that. I'm honestly embarrassed by how easy it was and that it took me this long to get it. Changing the subject.

She also filled me in on her camera remote.  I know Mena has one and so does my friend Jess, but I never really spent the time to get the details on them. Now I know and I need to order one, pronto.



Finally, the time had come to head home and the hubby appeared ready to play photographer.  He's such a good sport.  We gave him a hard time about the quality of photos that we expected and laughed about photoshoots with our significant others. I was sad to leave the party but I had such a great time meeting everyone. It's fun to find out that so many of these ladies live close by - we really need to do meet-ups more often.

I met so many lovely ladies and unfortunately didn't catch all of their blog addresses or their contact details (some didn't have blogs).  If you were an attendee and I missed you in this recap, please leave a comment with your blog.  I didn't want to butcher names or place the wrong names with people so I just left it off.  Some other attendees that I saw but didn't get the chance to chat with over our expansive table included Shams from Communing with Fabric, Elisabeth from e-beth knits, Veronique from Verte Adelie, and Daiyami from Sisters Are Making It For Themselves... who I had actually met previously at the first Bay Area Sewing Meetup at Britex a few months ago.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:13 PM

    I just stole that photo of us!

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    Replies
    1. Ha! I almost took the picture of my back tanline from your page just for laughs. ;)

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  2. Hi,
    Never commented on your blog before (long time lurker), but I just wanted to come out of the shadows to say that I'm so GLAD you decided to go to the meet-up; it looks like it was a ton of fun and inspires me to get over my fears too.
    Also: Love love love the Hazel on you!!
    Go you!

    Cat

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for commenting Cat! It was definitely worth it though I admit I was super quiet in the beginning as there were so many strangers and conversations going on. I just waited till I found a chatty group that I could jump in with. :)

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  3. Anonymous7:18 PM

    Oh I am so jealous! You ladies must have had a wonderful wonderful time! And you looked fabulous of course! I'm also new to RSS and such and any advice you have, please let me know! I'm old school and click sites that I have bookmarked manually. I have a google account but haven't imported my blog. Technology still scares me!

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  4. It looks like such a fabulous time!! I'm so glad you went and had a good experience with everyone :)

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